NASA's Cassini spacecraft captures the closest view of wavemaker moon 'Daphnis'

Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

New Delhi: The US space agency NASA has released a beautiful and close view of the wavemaker moon 'Daphnis'.

The image was captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft when one of its ring-grazing passes over the outer edges of Saturn's rings.

Captured on January 16, 2017, the image is the closest view of the small moon obtained yet.

According to NASA, The little moon's gravity raises waves in the edges of the gap in both the horizontal and vertical directions. Cassini was able to observe the vertical structures in 2009, around the time of Saturn's equinox.

As per reports, a faint, narrow tendril of ring material follows just behind Daphnis (to its left). This may have resulted from a moment when Daphnis drew a packet of material out of the ring, and now that packet is spreading itself out.

The image was taken in visible (green) light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 17,000 miles (28,000 kilometers) from Daphnis and at a Sun-Daphnis-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 71 degrees. Image scale is 551 feet (168 meters) per pixel.

The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency.